JoNova

He [Bandt] made the staggering claim that Malcolm Turnbull would have “blood on his hands” if he supported the building of coal-fired power stations, exclaiming that these stations would cause even more cyclones to hit the coast.

There is no evidence upon which to base this claim. In fact, over the past three or four years, far north Queensland has had ­almost no cyclones and experienced wet season failures in each of these years. The dam in Townsville is at a miserable 18 per cent ­because of those failures.

Sounds like a true skeptic:

Cyclones have been around forever and the advent of coal-fired power stations has neither ­increased nor decreased their frequency.

You would think this bloke would have learned a real lesson from Tim Flannery’s attempts…

Richardson goes on to mention failed predictions, and how Flannery got it “spectacularly wrong” and even how Arctic ice is melting, but Antarctic ice is stable.  It’s not news to us, but to hear from a Labor guy is.  And Richardson was one of the ones leading Labor into the Enviro-green mould nearly 30 years ago. Fitting then, if all these years later, he is leading them out of it:

As far back as 1989, I was the minister who took a submission to cabinet on global warming, as this phenomenon was then called. I am not prepared to dump my core ­belief, but like the sceptics, my view has gradually changed and so should theirs.

To get some idea of just how far he has come, here’s what he said nearly two years ago:

“Labor vacated the arena of argument. The sceptics and deniers have turned the 70 per cent-plus belief in climate change into a minority because no one has engaged them.” – Graham Richardson, May 2015

And I can’t resist, indulge me, I still like my reply at the time: No one has engaged the deniers!  Oh really? says JoNova

That’s right Graham, we unfunded bloggers and the few surviving skeptical scientists not evicted and blackballed from our universities (yet) have tricked 20% of the population because no one has put forward the climate change arguments except for:  The Climate Commission, CSIRO, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Royal Dutch Shell, GE, Panasonic, The ABC, The BBC, The Guardian, Fairfax, The Australian government, most universities, The EU, The UN, The World Bank, and the IMF.

With a budget of nothing we’re winning. Why? We have nature on our side.

 Reading Richardson’s comments in 2015, he might argue that he was bagging out the Greens then, and he still believes in climate change now, the difference is that now, he sounds more and more like a skeptic and has gone in hard to mock the prophets of doom.

Richardson 2015:

 I am starting to feel like the lone Japanese soldier stranded on a long-forgotten Pacific island still fighting a war for a lost cause. I am still a believer in climate change. I am not hysterical about it and don’t believe our cities and towns are about to be inundated by some permanent tsunami caused by human activity. I do believe our rainfall patterns will be interrupted and some areas will be drier, others wetter. It would be wonderful if we could focus on what those changes might be.

The Labor Party need more sensible voices like Richardson. To Richardson, when he says skeptics should be willing to change their views, I say, absolutely. My views are still open to change, and in the last ten years they’ve changed, I’ve become more and more skeptical.

The 12th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-12) will take place on Thursday and Friday, March 23–24 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC, thanks to the Heartland Institute. Watch and hear the scientists, economists, engineers, and policy experts who persuaded President Donald Trump that man-made global warming is not a crisis, and therefore Barack Obama’s war on fossil fuels must be ended.

WATCH LIVE STARTING AT 8:00 AM (ET) ON THURSDAY, MARCH 23

More information below…

Keep reading  →

After years of struggle to conceive, plus tortured introspection about the effect her baby might have on future storms, Sophie Lewis, climate scientist, announces conception in the most convoluted way:

And then, just as senselessly as our grief began, it ended. For no particular reason, the expected bad baby news never arrived and now the complexity of having an imagined child will become a concrete ethical entanglement.

Exactly. And many a climate model operates with all the same clarity and insight.

But sincere congratulations to Sophie Lewis. We hope her good news brings her  years of joy.

We also pray she escapes the climate bubble soon. Because by golly, she’s in deep.

Lewis reveals the paroxysms of irreconcilable guilt — where the evolutionary drive conflicts with the climate religion:

Older climate scientists speak widely about their worries for their grandchildren and the world they have provided them. While such concerns must weigh on older minds, younger climate scientists’ future concerns require active deliberation. Should we have children? And if we do, how do we raise them in a world of change and inequity? Can I reconcile my care and concern for the future with such an active and deliberate pursuit of a child?

Put simply, I can’t. Nowadays, the pitter-patter of tiny feet is inevitably the pitter-patter of giant carbon footprints. Reusable nappies, a bike trailer and secondhand jumpsuits might make me feel like I’m taking individual action but they will achieve little. A child born today is inevitably a consumer and, most significantly, is a consumer of greenhouse gases.

Warning. Pure climate-princess material coming — The climate battle is like World War II:

Living in and starting a family in volatile and uncertain times are not unique experiences. My grandmother fled Europe in the early 1950s for a better life in Australia. A German Jew, her family had been scattered, with herself interned in Britain, her sister lost in Auschwitz and her family’s desperate flight rebuffed by an indifferent world. Years of horror, combined with strict rations and economic uncertainty drove her to strike out bravely for a new life in Australia with her young babies.

But there was icing on the cake of the abject horror then — No such luck now:

Climate change is a critically different problem. In my grandmother’s time of abject horror, good people were empowered – to varying degrees – to do good. After the war ended, the actions of just a few were recognised as having salvaged the honour of all our humanity. Nowadays, the very act of living in Australia, regardless of concern for our climate future, is detrimental.

Now there are no heroes, just climate prophets (who can’t seem to predict anything useful) and whose bodily existence, like everyone else, including babies “is detrimental”

Indeed, to paraphase her baby announcement:

And then, just as senselessly as our grief began, it ended. For no particular reason, the expected bad climate news never arrived and now the complexity of having an imagined climate has become a concrete ethical entanglement.

I’m worried having a baby will make climate change worse — Sydney Morning Herald. Where else?

Those warmists who fear that a child,
Could leave our green planet defiled,
Or that one baby primate,
Could change Earth’s whole climate,
Are by climate-change hot air beguiled.

–Ruairi